Direct & indirect impact

The banking sector’s role in climate change is twofold, encompassing both direct and indirect impacts.Thedirect environmental impacts that we consider range from emissions produced by UniCredit’s offices and business units to the transportation used by staff.

We account for the environmental effects of the following:

building and facilities management

transportation

office management, including excess waste products and water and energy consumption

Our “indirect impacts” include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to UniCredit’s financing operations, such as loans and other financial services that we provide.For example, our private and corporate customers can use our financing for activities that negatively impact the environment, resulting in CO2 and other GHG emissions.

Indirect environmental impacts can also relate to our purchasing practices and the activities of our suppliers.We seek to consider this when stipulating the key characteristics of the products and services we wish to acquire.

Ecology at Bank Austria

A wide range of tasks have been defined within Bank Austria to facilitate healthy internal operational ecology and to increase the bank’s own eco-efficiency. These measures are part of a holistic sustainability concept.

By applying this approach, Bank Austria is striving to reduce its resource usage and to significantly cut costs while increasing efficiency over the long term. Legal compliance allows risks to be avoided and also underscores the bank’s position as a positive role model in the area of sustainability.

Green IT

The idea behind Green IT is to keep the environmental impact and use of resources associated with information technology as low as possible. Efforts in this context focus on the design and production of hardware as well as its use, disposal and recycling. Bank Austria has acted as a pioneer in this area by virtualising servers and thus significantly reducing electricity consumption.